


A Moon and its Stars on Antar

by UndomesticatedEquines



Series: A Moon and its Stars [2]
Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: (Very brief), Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Inspired by real science, M/M, POV Alex Manes, POV Michael Guerin, i promise this has a happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-26
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-17 02:20:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29710149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UndomesticatedEquines/pseuds/UndomesticatedEquines
Summary: After being forced to leave Earth,  Michael and his siblings ready for the Alighting as best they can. While exploring their home planet, they realize the locals may not have been entirely truthful about what's entailed, or what the Alighting could do to them.Alex, meanwhile, tries to accept that he'll never know if Michael survived.
Relationships: Michael Guerin/Alex Manes
Series: A Moon and its Stars [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2172708
Comments: 8
Kudos: 47





	1. Antar

**Author's Note:**

> As promised, part two. Remember, I believe in happy endings. 
> 
> This is designed to be read after part one, but could probably be read separate if you wanted.

The trees didn’t look right. Michael had expected different food, people, and customs. He hadn’t expected a distinct lack of booze—and hadn’t _that_ been a wake-up call, on the way here; maybe Max had been right about his drinking. He’d started referring to everything in his head as the closest human counterpart—not-streets, not-pasta, not-courtyards— but trees were fundamental. He knew, intellectually, that trees were different all around Earth, that there were places that had never seen a cactus. But trees, trees were part of the immutability of life he’d apparently taken for granted. He could get used to the taste of the air, humid and sharp on his tongue, and the sweltering heat, and the way they _sat_ , but every time he saw a tree, it threw him back. He was on another planet, in another _galaxy_ , so far from everything he knew.

Michael had thought they’d come to town like legendary heroes, arriving to slay the dragon, but while they were met with relief, there was also an undercurrent of disdain. They’d been raised on a lesser planet, with a lesser culture. With a language that needed to be spoken aloud, and relied on body language and tone for clarity. They were given Ofpries as their “liaison.” He was a wan man who seemed to see himself as a babysitter. Michael had the uncontrollable urge to call him Jeeves.

At first, he, Max, and Isobel threw themselves into the new culture. They didn’t speak aloud, other than the occasional curse or automatic “sorry”. They felt self-conscious about it, and about their clumsy way of speaking mind-to-mind. They’d practiced with each other on the trip, but it turned out that the visitors had spoken to them slowly and carefully, as to a child. On Antar, though, everyone spoke a million miles a minute, and it was intimidating. They’d committed, though, so they applied themselves, trying to leave English and every other tie to Earth behind.

All, that is, except for music. There was no concept for music on Antar. Their music, poetry, stories, they were all told mind-to-mind. Instead of having a piece of art evoke a feeling, there was a piece of technology that literally brought the emotion to mind when touched. Michael found it simplistic; Max thought it was cheating. At least twice a week, the three would spend an hour or two listening to Michael play the guitar. They all took turns singing, too, though none of them had Alex’s gift for it. It centered Michael, just as it always had, perhaps even more so, since it was Alex’s guitar. Now playing it didn’t just settle his mind, it also evoked the memory of Alex’s bedrock of calm. It was a bittersweet joy, but it kept Alex with him, at least in part.

Most of their time was spent strengthening and understanding their powers. Max had learned, back on Earth, that they all had each other’s powers, to a lesser extent. It was like rock, paper, scissors. For the three main powers, each of them had a primary, secondary, and tertiary. Michael’s primary was telekinesis, then healing, then a poor approximation of telepathy. Max had healing, telepathy, and only vague telekinesis. Isobel had telepathy, telekinesis, and a limited ability to heal. They all also had individual powers. Michael could grow plants, Isobel could summon wind, and Max could throw fire and lightning.

When they’d first heard that, it was a fun bit of trivia, to be experimented with at their leisure. Now, it was the difference between life and death, and they dove into learning, ending every session puking. Their practice sessions were taught by various experts in the Antarian community, all under the watchful eye of Ofpries.

They weren’t allowed outside, at first. Everything was provided for them in the training facility they were housed in. Their powers were too important, they were told. Of all the things Michael had anticipated, it wasn’t that his powers would set him apart here, too.

They yielded for the first couple of weeks, their language skills still underdeveloped. When they felt they could get around the not-city, they requested to leave again. Ofpries seemed offended.

 _[Everything provided]_ he sent.

 _[New planet]_ Max sent.

 _[Different people]_ Isobel sent.

 _[Interesting tech]_ Michael sent.

 _[Ridiculous]_ Ofpries sent. _[All provided until Alighting]_

The argument went back and forth until Michael raised a hand to his siblings, a slight smile on his face. He wanted to try something. His mind was chaos? It was about time the noise started working for him. He flooded Ofpries with every technical question he’d ever thought of, every equation he’d calculated, every unfinished human physics concept, starting with quantum mechanics and ending with general relativity. He sent it all in bursts, letting wave after wave crash into the not-Jeeves. [ _You want us to stay here?]_ He sent in a very human syntax, _[Then you can give me the answers]_

Ofpries’ unflappable expression faltered. Michael grinned.

After the fight they’d had with Ofpries, they got strange looks on the not-streets, and they expected to have a harder time fitting in outside of the facility, but they found their places remarkably easily. In their spare hours, Michael found a research institution, Max found a collective of what passed for artists, and Isobel found a group of socialites.

 _[Really?]_ Max and Michael sent her.

 _[Name a faster way of getting information than through the gossip chain of socialites]_ Isobel sent back. _[I don’t want to depend on Ofpries for everything]_

 _[Point]_ they sent back.

She fit in perfectly, Michael observed, her imperious nature and obvious social status as one of the sole heirs to the Alighting allowing her to infiltrate their not-sewing circles seamlessly. Every faux pas was met with the Ann Evans haughty sniff, which translated to Antarian surprisingly well.

Max, meanwhile, was adjusting his view of Antarian art. Apparently, you could forge tech to bring you on an entire emotional journey, and they started arguing about the way to get the most impact. Michael thought his process was a little too 19th century Russian depressing, but he also couldn’t begrudge the joy Max showed when he got back after an evening spent discussing the finer details of storytelling from a purely emotional perspective.

For his part, Michael was thoroughly enjoying the research institution. The not-quite-engineers and not-quite-scientists (similar work but different connotations, ones he had yet to parse out) didn’t care about his status or that his skin was pale instead of phosphorescent. Initially, they saw him as a fresh perspective, with different technology from their own. Simplistic, certainly, but sometimes a child’s view provided the most insight. Once they saw how rapidly he devoured new information and how quickly his mind made fresh connections, they revised their opinion of him, and invited him into their research more enthusiastically.

It was there Michael met an ornery and blunt woman, Salan, and her lab and life partner, the outgoing Apran, his first friends on Antar. The three of them spent hours together on his few free evenings off from practice, talking, working, and laughing. After the first week of this, they invited him over for a meal, a dish whose flavors Earth words could not hope to encompass. He played Alex’s guitar for them, an experience they were decidedly confused by.

Outside of these bubbles, though, they felt decidedly unwelcome. People on the not-street would stop and stare. There was no susurrus of whispers on the wind, like there would be on Earth, but there was a buzzing in their minds, a curious, grateful, yet affronted hum that followed them everywhere. Even among their new friends, whenever they’d pull out a cultural or technological anecdote, they were confronted with a feeling of otherness—confusion, curiosity, but above all, a lack of understanding.

In a way, being Earth-grown outsiders on their home planet fused the siblings together as being Antarians on Earth had once done, before the murders and lies had turned that against them. Michael started feeling his siblings in his mind like they felt each other, started to regain that connection they’d lost all those years ago when Max and Isobel had left the group home without him. That connection strengthened, too, until it was no longer a faint warmth, but an open line, able to send feelings and thoughts and messages, regardless of how far apart they were.

After about a month on Antar, they began to shed. It itched _everywhere_ for three Antarian days, and at the end, he felt naked and too bright. It was around this time that homesickness pushed in. Everything was so new, and overwhelming, and they found that they didn’t want to erase who they were before. They were different from the others; they’d never not be. Why not own it? They started talking aloud with each other, if only to keep that part of themselves alive.

“I feel like I’m in a Lisa Frank drawing,” Michael said to his siblings after their skin stopped peeling.

“And here I thought we were celebrating Pride,” Isobel said.

“It does kind of look like the pan flag,” Michael allowed. “We glow for you, Iz.”

“Thank you,” she said. “About time you deferred to me in your fashion choices.”

“It reacts to touch,” Max said, alarmed.

“Does for everyone else, too,” Michael said.

“No, I mean, here,” Max said, reaching out.

Michael took his hand. Where they touched, they glowed brighter. He could feel the contact ripple throughout his entire body, and he felt Max’s surprise as keenly as his own. He yanked his hand away. “Yep, definitely feeling naked here,” he said.

“We’ll get used to it,” Isobel said firmly.

Neither Michael nor Max disagreed aloud.

“At least it’s not as stiflingly hot anymore,” Max offered.

As if the shedding were a signal, Ofpries upped their trainings. Free time became an illusion. Michael kept working in the lab, but he had to cut back his hours. After finding something on this planet that had felt good, he didn’t want to give that up. Salan and Apran were amazingly supportive, in a way he was still getting used to accepting, propping him up (sometimes literally) when he came in, physically and mentally exhausted. They brought him Alex’s guitar occasionally, when they felt it was something he needed. It still didn’t make sense to them, but one advantage of an emotion-based telepathic communication system was that they could tell how much it centered Michael to play.

He played when he felt overwhelmed, when he felt there was no chance he’d survive. It let him hold Alex’s love in his heart, bruised by reality and history but strong, known, a support he desperately needed. He clung to the memory of Alex like a buoy, but resisted thinking of him in too much detail. He’d given up that life, and he had to accept his new one.

He spent his nights outside, though, under the watchful eyes of the moon and stars. The moon was a new source of comfort, but also tension—whatever the Alighting was, it had to do with the moon, for him, at least. The stars, though, were an old comfort. He knew none of them were the same as he saw on Earth—they were in the Canis Major Dwarf galaxy, after all—but they still reminded him of Alex. Of home.

How pathetic was he that he’d always dreamed of the stars but now that he was out here, he dreamed of Earth? Of a water-covered planet on which he’d lived in a desert, never seeing an ocean. He’d barely ventured out of his hometown, instead dreaming of flying away, flying to his family, somewhere he’d be accepted, loved. Somewhere they didn’t exorcise you for catching the belt with your mind. Somewhere they didn’t shove you in the system or the drunk tank when you were inconvenient to their image of the world. Somewhere he had people who could train him how to use his powers, teach him his technology, show him who he got the curls from. He was learning his powers, but was this really what he’d dreamed of? This dwarf, broken galaxy?

He knew the scientific community on Earth theorized that this galaxy, the closest to Earth, was being pulled apart by the Milky Way, just as the Milky Way and Andromeda would do to each other in billions of years. There’d be no cinematic collisions of planets and stars, though, just gravity. Gravity would kill you just as surely as anything, but not in the Hollywood way. The key to everything was balance. Replacing the Earth’s sun with a black hole of the same mass wouldn’t pull Earth into it; it wouldn’t change the orbits of the planets at all. But add a new gravitational body next to the sun—another star, another planet, a black hole—and the delicate balance would be thrown off. Colliding galaxies would be just that on a massive scale. Each galaxy’s gravitational center would throw off the balances of the other, like dragging a magnet through a sea of pennies. Planets and stars would be flung away from each other and solar systems would unravel. Earth wouldn’t stop existing; it would just be moved too far from the sun. Too far from the warmth to survive.

The whole thing just felt like a giant metaphor to Michael.

He couldn’t go back, though. For better or worse, this was his life now, so he tried to make it his home. “Home” was a word that had only ever meant Alex, but if this was where he’d raise a child, he had to get used to it. (Isobel kept asking Ofpries when they’d start dating, but he’d brushed them off, much to Michael’s relief.) As the months wore on, though, Salan and Apran were the only thing that helped him hold out hope for a place here. The not-streets and the judging became almost unbearable. It felt like the people were relieved he was there, but annoyed at their dependence on him. He felt like he was back in the system, with people talking past him, about him, never to him. He tried to learn more of the culture, but even with Iz’s help, he still felt outside, looking in. The curse of his life, it seemed.

It was astounding, Michael found, now that the thrill of the fuller language had worn off, that you could know how someone was feeling, live their memories, literally understand their thoughts and still not understand them. His hands itched for a drink, to make the pain go away, but that couldn’t happen on this dry planet. He had Max and Isobel, though, an oasis in this new desert, and he leaned on them hard, almost as hard as they leaned on him.

“I don’t get it,” he said one evening as he pulled Alex’s guitar to him. “By all accounts, my mom and Louise were kind, accepting people. How did we end up with… this?”

“My dad was also from here. And He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named,” Max said. “They weren’t… good people.”

“There’s no evidence Noah was a homicidal psychopath before he watched a genocide and spent fifty-odd years in a broken pod, awake, in pain, and unable to move,” Isobel said, voice level and knuckles white. “He cocooned, and turned crazy. Like a murdering, agency-stealing butterfly.” She closed her eyes as Michael and Max sent feelings of safety and comfort her way.

“Still, didn’t you expect nicer people?” Michael asked.

“Yes,” Max said.

“It’s because our families left,” Isobel said, flipping her hair out of her face. “Everyone around here, their families lived through a traumatic war. The way they handled their lack of ability to escape it is to be proud they stayed. They passed that pride on. It’s like… You know when people complain about it being hot when it’s only 80?”

“That’s not hot,” Max said.

“Exactly. Desert-dwellers, instead of admitting that we live somewhere crazy hot, we put down other peoples’ ideas of hot. We turn our heat into a source of pride. Cold weather people do it, too.”

“And what, you think it’s that on a planetary scale? No. No two people have the same trauma responses,” Michael said. “No way does an entire planet react the same way.”

“Then you figure it out. That’s my theory,” Isobel said.

Time went on, and he pushed it from his mind. _You can’t force yourself to become comfortable_ , he reminded himself, _it comes with time and familiarity_. It was the first lesson Old Man Foster had taught him about ranching. “As you learn the work, it’ll become second nature to you,” the man had said all those years ago. “And then one day you’ll look around and realize the ranch is your home.” It had worked then, mostly, and Michael had adapted well, so he dove into the work, his research and the trainings.

As their trainings increased, so too did their desire to understand what was expected of them during the Alighting. Every request was brushed off by Ofpries, though, and Michael found himself too exhausted to overwhelm the man with his chaos like he had before. Maybe that had been the dour man’s plan. Their other friends couldn’t answer any better, saying it was something to do with genetic lines, the suns and the moon, and their powers. The familiar feeling of it remained. It was something just out of reach, and try as he might, he couldn’t catch it.

Their powers grew to heights they’d never imagined. Isobel projected emotions into hundreds of volunteers: calming them, enraging them, putting them to sleep. She pulled memories from one person’s head and transplanted them into another’s without ever seeing the memory herself. She learned to create tornadoes with her mind, and calm entire storms. Max healed over and over again, learning how to leave handprints with the smallest scratches and how not to leave them for the gravest injuries. (“It’s emotion,” he explained one night. “The more of myself I put in a person, the stronger the link.”) He’d already learned to throw lightning, now he learned fire, creating huge conflagrations, and gained mastery over the electromagnetic fluctuations that had popped bulbs on Earth. Michael’s control over his telekinesis grew by leaps and bounds, until he could control a hurricane of objects, swirling them, putting them delicately into place. He worked on his strength until he could lift not-buildings, his finesse until he could crack not-eggs and ensure no shell got into the not-bowls—he even learned to cross-stitch. That one was never something he’d done on Earth, and it confused every instructor he had, but he found it an Earth thing he could reclaim for himself.

The power that Michael most loved, though, was growing plants. He planted seeds with his TK, grew entire fields with his plant power. He combined it with his healing to get rid of spots and combined it with his poor telepathy to feel the lives of the plants. He could tell which needed water, which needed sunlight, and which just needed calming. The crops never asked anything from him, content to sway in the breeze, warm in the light of the suns, and he’d sink into that feeling.

The deadline for the Alighting loomed ever closer, though, every Antarian day. As much as they tried to avoid thinking about it, spending their free time with their friends and their hobbies, or with each other, the lessons got more and more intense. Eventually, their free time dwindled, and their lives were simply lessons. They found their limits every day, no longer throwing up at the end, but somewhere around the middle, and kept pushing.

It was hard to avoid thinking about something you were building a life around.

Finally, a month before the Alighting, Isobel screwed cultural niceties and looked into Ofpries’ mind.

“He doesn’t know,” she said, throwing him out of the not-atrium.

“Wait, what?” Max asked.

“He doesn’t know. He has absolutely no idea what we need for the Alighting.” Iz paused, lip curling in disgust. “Apparently it’s a family secret. They know no one else can do it, but they have no idea what it entails. Their records show people laying down and screaming. There’s a flare of power everyone can feel, all across the planet, but they don’t know what it does. They know everyone’s exhausted at the end, and they’ve felt the lack of it, these past years.”

“So, they don’t even know what it does?” Max asked, voice rising. “Does it even need to happen?”

“Yes,” she said, closing her eyes. “If it doesn’t, everything falls apart. They’re not really very clear on the how, but they are clear on the results. They feel it in their bones.”

“I don’t feel it in my bones,” Max said.

“About the whole ‘surviving’ thing…” Michael asked.

“According to the records,” Isobel said, “People with mastery over their powers have a higher survival rate. But everyone – in our absence—has also agreed that there must have been secrets passed down through the generations.”

“How do they die?” Max asked.

“The screaming happens every time, but it sounds as though they just … stop. Fall into a coma and their organs shut down.”

They sat in silence for a time, absorbing that. Michael looked up to the dark sky, stars fully visible in the waning light of the two suns. He felt the plants around him like a fullness in his chest, felt their health, their warmth settling in for the night.

“I can almost feel it,” he said. “What we’re supposed to do. It’s like it’s just out of reach.”

“Same,” Isobel said.

“I have nothing,” Max said.

“Maybe it _is_ a secret passed on,” Michael said. “And our moms told us. Your dad wouldn’t have told you—he was a homicidal psychopath.”

“My dad, the alien Hitler,” Max said, failing to grin.

“Maybe…” Isobel started. “Maybe it’s something I can look for. In our memories. If our moms really did tell us something, I might be able to find it.”

“Maybe I can heal it,” Max said.

It was surprisingly easy to keep everyone out of the facility. Michael had been working on his powers’ strength for so long with the goal of the Alighting, he’d forgotten how useful they could be in other situations.

Like this one. Michael swallowed. He’d be lying if he said it hadn’t crossed his mind, with Isobel’s strength and control improving. But that was an Old Dream. He’d done so well, most days, at letting the Old Dreams die, to focus on the New Dream that wasn’t his at all, but his life nonetheless. As if wishing could forge this new identity into a dream. As if he could convince himself that this was all he’d ever wanted. It was, in a fashion. He’d wanted to be useful. He’d wanted to be needed. He’d wanted to be enough.

He didn’t expect to have to give up everything else for it.

He’d expected that it would have come with being _liked_.

Now, though, every Old Dream he’d been pushing back was vying for a place in the forefront of his mind, and he kept pushing them out. He was supposed to be calming his mind. Isobel had been in his head before—before Jesse Manes, before Rosa, before his dreams had turned to ash in his mouth, before his chaos had raged out of control for over a decade—and his mind’s noise had overwhelmed her. He’d gotten the chaos reined in, in recent years, with Alex’s help, and while that control had frayed like his nerves had since leaving Earth under constant training and anticipation, exhaustion and the guitar had kept it at bay.

They’d waited til morning, and he’d spent the night playing guitar, trying to untangle the web of thoughts that had drowned him at the prospect of remembering his mom. His mom, with the bright eyes and brighter smile, looking at him like he was the only thing that mattered. Like the last seventy years of captivity and torture were immaterial, now that she saw him safe and loved.

With the emergence of the Old Dreams, though, came Alex. The person she’d seen love him. The person whose guitar was one of the few things that kept him sane on this alien planet. His home. This was his home, now, it had to be. He had to let the Old Dreams die.

He wished he had a new one.

“Are you ready?” Isobel asked him.

“As ever,” Michael tried to joke. It felt forced. She’d been training, and he had nothing but faith in her abilities, but he’d wanted to make this easier on her. He removed his shirt and took her hand.

Max put his hand on his chest, ready to try to heal the synapses to the memories as Isobel called them up. They had no idea if that would work, but Michael couldn’t ask Max to sit this out.

“So, what’s it going to be, doc? Handprint or no?” Michael asked, trying again for levity.

“It’s emotion,” Max said again, voice thick. “The amount of emotion I put into it, the stronger the handprint. I know what this means to you—I can’t not have strong emotions about it.” He coughed, clearing his throat. “So yeah, you’re going to get a handprint.”

Michael gave a thin smile, sending a wave of love to his brother. It was easier to send the feeling, let it bubble out of him, than to try to say the words. Max received it and closed his eyes, overcome. He sent his own love back.

“Don’t make me put on your cowboys hats,” Isobel threatened, but they could feel her fondness, her joy at them getting along. She checked in with them mentally, once more, then dove in.

Michael remembered the feeling from last time—a slight floating, like things mattered less. He and Max had always remembered Iz in their heads, unlike the humans. They couldn’t see the setting, not like she could, but they always remembered the conversations and suggestions.

 _What do you know about the Alighting_ , Isobel asked, surrounded by swirling dust.

Michael saw his response, felt a ghost of his frustration: dozens of memories of Ofpries and the others, failing to explain the suns, the moon, the symbols. Them.

 _No_ , Isobel said. _What did your mother tell you?_

 _My mom_ , Michael said dreamily. He was dimly aware of Max’s hand growing warm, and he saw her: chestnut hair, warm brown eyes, and her brilliant smile. He saw flashes of her, holding his hand, working with tech while he sat, transfixed, pushing his hair out of his eyes. The swirling dust around Isobel picked up speed and she winced.

 _The Alighting_ , Isobel said. _What did she tell you about the Alighting?_

Images flashed in front of him, too fast to register, but accompanied by a growing undercurrent of love. Love and acceptance and a fierce protectiveness. Michael felt himself start to buckle.

One scene stopped in front of him.

_[My Rathgar] his mother said. They sat in the not-field, looking out at the moon, the stars filling the rest of the sky. It was peaceful out here, and familiar. [Moon family legacy] she explained. [Future you moon]_

_[Moon?] Little Rathgar asked._

_[Moon] she replied, fondness and faith flowing out of her. [Hold on, hold tight, pull tight] She ruffled his hair, filling his head with the solar system. [Moon help you, have to pull back]_

_[Confusion] Little Rathgar sent._

_She smiled, her love filling him. [Moon explain, you drift, moon hear] There was an explosion in the distance, and her head jerked up._

The memory faded away. The dust had turned into a whirling storm, and Michael couldn’t hear Isobel over it.

She pulled out of his mind, and suddenly he was back in himself, clutching her hand, Max’s hand grounding on his chest, glowing with a warmth that felt like his mother’s. There was still such noise, and as Max and Isobel pulled him close, he realized he was sobbing.

“We have to pull it back,” he managed. “Whatever drifted too far, we have to pull it back. The moon will explain. It’ll hear us when we drift.”

Isobel shushed him, and he let his siblings hold him. His defenses had broken down in the face of his mother’s love, and everything he’d pushed down was boiling over. All he’d ever wanted was to belong. He’d belonged in his mother’s arms, in Alex’s, and he missed them, with every fiber of his being. He mourned the lives he could have had, mourned the lives _they_ could have had.

He was probably going to die. His mother hadn’t thought so, hadn’t warned him, but he could feel it in his heart. He was probably going to die, and he’d break his promise to Alex. He’d leave his child, the one they’d make from his cells. He’d leave his child as alone as he’d been. His dreams were dead and so was he. He crumpled, and his siblings wrapped him up safe. That was good. He belonged in their arms, too.


	2. The Alighting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's time for the Alighting.

No one could explain to the three returned refugees why the Alighting was this day, but it was. No one could explain what they were supposed to do, either. They’d talked for days about what they’d learned in Michael’s memories, and decided that once they were drifting (whatever that meant), they’d go to their given celestial body and hope to receive instructions. It felt insane, but it was still the most direction they had.

“We have to drift,” Michael said. The moon wasn’t visible at this time of day, but the suns were, and he hoped that would help Max and Isobel.

“I don’t see a lazy river around here,” Isobel said. “What exactly are we drifting along?”

“We’ll know it when we feel it,” Max said, quoting Ofpries.

Isobel laughed. “That’s what Mom said about sex.”

“Ugh, Iz…” Max said.

Michael laughed, too. “Sounds like Max could’ve used a little more direction.”

“OK, what if it’s like our powers?” Max asked. “The first time we used them, it was just instinct.”

“Still sounds like you’re talking about sex,” Isobel drawled, but they quieted.

“Anyone feel anything?” Michael asked after a bit.

“Nope.”

“Nada.”

They waited some more, trying to be open. Nervous jitters started to be overtaken by frustration.

“This is ridiculous,” Michael said. “No one here has a clue what is even supposed to happen, how are we supposed to trust that they know _when_ it’s supposed to happen?”

“Guys,” Isobel gasped.

“I don’t know, Michael, but we need to try _something_ ,” Max snapped.

“Guys,” Isobel tried again.

“Because if this doesn’t work, we left Earth for no reason,” Max continued. “We left _them_ for _no_ _reason_.”

“Guys!”

“What?”

“Your minds. Reach out— _drift—_ with your minds,” she said.

Michael closed his eyes, reaching out, and felt— _everyone_.

The entire planet was opening their minds. Michael’s telepathy existed, but barely, and he could feel the collective knotted emotion of a planet full of people start to crush him. He felt Isobel steel herself and connect to them all, taking the brunt, creating a shield, and looping him and Max in. The knots distinguished into individual people, _millions_ of people, with their own thoughts, feelings, dreams, and heartaches. He felt them as acutely as his own and he fell to his knees under the enormity of it: millions of hopes, millions of fears, millions of _people_. Dimly, he heard screams, and they might’ve been his, or Max’s, or Isobel’s, or those of a man cooking on the other side of the world. Every person loomed huge in his mind, and he felt _everything_. He was losing himself to them all, his essence dissolving under the weight of so many others. When he struggled to find himself in the mess, he was only able to because of the otherness of his and his siblings’ souls. They stood out like neon in a sea of white, and he couldn’t pretend anymore.

These weren’t his people. This wasn’t his culture. This wasn’t his language. They didn’t understand him on a fundamental level, and he didn’t understand them. He looked for Salan and Apran, his friends, and found them, working on their nanotech. He felt their joy at the work, their curiosity at the mystery before them, and their gratitude that they had a fresh perspective in Michael. They were fully absorbed in their research, oblivious to his mind connecting to theirs, and he felt... separate. Comfortable, hiding in the tech, in the discovery—that at least, was the same—but he saw the way they viewed the world, and it defied explanation, to him. The way they viewed the day, the way they viewed themselves, the way they viewed meals and children and his music, it all came from a different place, and while their different perspectives were great for scientific discovery, he knew they’d never understand each other. He backed away from them, losing himself in the otherworldliness of the planet, the people. It threatened to consume him, and he fled the pain and the grief and the millions of voices. His mind drifted, drifted away. _The moon_ , his mother had told him, so he drifted around the planet, gravitating toward the moon. It was quiet there, the plants and animals living their lives, ignorant of the onslaught around him. The moon sensed him there, its presence a bastion of steadiness, and led him toward the suns.

He felt the suns, too, or was that Max and Isobel? His own start and end had disappeared back on the planet, perhaps theirs had as well. They were too far, he knew. The suns. The moon hummed in his mind, quiet but strong, directing him, helping him. The suns opened their minds, too, or maybe that was his siblings, but suddenly, he knew. He _knew_.

The Milky Way was ripping this solar system apart, bit by bit. It’d take millennia to destroy it completely, but the orbits were already misaligned, their balance thrown off. The planets and the stars would drift too far, and the suns wouldn’t warm them. The drift would happen over huge time scales, but to pull them back, to _fix_ this, it had to be done regularly, or else the weight would be too much.

He positioned himself between the suns, so close that the film of plasma the white dwarf pulled from the donor star—so thin as to be invisible from the planet—was massive and blinding. He felt Max and Isobel on either side of him, each in the place of the suns, or _were_ they the suns? He settled his soul there and followed the moon’s call to reach out to Antar, to the other planets in the solar system—they were too far, they’d drifted too far—and he _pulled._ He wasn’t enough, no, he couldn’t move planets on his own, but he wasn’t alone, was he, he was connected to an entire planet of people with telekinesis, connected to a moon and two suns. Their powers focused through Isobel as she kept the minds of an entire planet connected to them, Max healing them as they worked, keeping them alive through the strain, but Michael’s job was to pull, to use the combined powers of the planet and the suns and the moon and _pull_.

This was the screaming, then, the effort. Strain and grief and pain and too much, everything was _too much_ , he couldn’t hold on, he couldn’t pull it all. He was only moving the planets a tiny amount, from the perspective of the suns, but it was so _much_ , and he fought to endure their weight. But he was used to fighting through pain, and everything had been too much since his mother had died, so he drowned the part of himself that was buckling and focused instead on the strength of the people he pulled from, these foreign people he’d never be part of, the comfortable warmth of the moon, the explosive power of the donor star, of Max, and the quiet strength of the white dwarf, of Isobel. He lost himself in the chaos and pulled and pulled and pulled.

Time lost meaning just as he had lost his body ages ago. He needed to slow, now—the planets were nearing their orbits but this would be for nothing if he pulled them too far—and he felt Max and Isobel wavering. Their minds and bodies were exhausted from the strain, and he didn’t have much left, he was seconds from losing everything. Then he felt it. It was done. The planets, the moons, they were back in their proper places, forward momentum stalled, settled into their newly-stable orbits. The Milky Way still pulled, but that took time. As long as the Alighting happened, as long as the telekinetic strength of a planet was channeled to pull the planets back to the stars, the solar system survived.

Michael felt himself let go of his siblings, of the people on the planet. His mind, void from strain, drifted. He remembered nothing but pain: not his name, not his family, not his body. He was lost, but that was all right, because he was done. He’d finished what he’d needed to do; he’d completed the Alighting. He felt the moon guide him back to it, to its tranquility. He felt it better now, the moon, large in his mind. The world revolved around the suns, but it _lived_ because of the moon. Its quiet pull on the planet caused distortions, caused tides, caused the swirls of nutrients in the waters, caused _life_. It sat, calm and serene on the periphery, watching its handiwork from a distance, offering nothing but its constant support.

The flora and fauna on its surface weren’t sentient; they didn’t want, or hope, or grieve. The life there spent its time on the endless cycle, and Michael dove into that feeling, that constant feeling of death and rebirth and interconnectivity. He felt the rich loam and thin chalk of the soil, the grasping of the plants, stretching to find nutrients. Some succeeded, reaching for the sky, and some failed, withering to the ground, but he felt them all. He felt the plants gain strength from stronger solar rays, felt their warmth on creatures’ backs, and he knew that he had done that. He had made their lives easier, just a little bit. Sometimes the not-hare escaped the not-fox, sometimes the not-fox caught it. Michael felt them, too. It wasn’t ruthless or desperate or painful, it just was. And for a time, so was Michael.

He’d been drifting for an indeterminate length of time when the music started. It was soft at first, and he could barely hear it over the trickling of the brooks, the heartbeats of the animals, and the rustle of the not-leaves. It tugged at him, at his untethered soul, lightly at first, then insistently. _I just tried to keep you warm_ … He understood the language, he knew he did, but he couldn’t make out the words. He knew it, though. He knew he knew it. _Now I can’t look away…_ It grew in volume, grew in feeling, until he heard it all around him, the melody harmonizing seamlessly with the sounds of the life on the moon. _If I called off the battalion, tear my walls down stone by stone,_ he heard, and it filled him, filled him with something, but he couldn’t… he didn’t…

_Would you come home?_

Everything came rushing back to him. Michael—his name was _Michael_ —was drifting, drifting too long and too far, and Alex, Alex was too far away. Max and Isobel, were they alive? Did they survive? Were they drifting, too? Was that how the Alighting killed you? If you survived the strain of moving a solar system, did you die slowly, soul untethered from your body, unable to find a way back?

He breathed, and when he did he could feel it in his chest, could feel it respond. The song still played in his head, and it guided him back, tethering his soul to his body, but he didn’t… he wasn’t…

_We could quiet all the noises…_

Home wasn’t here, on Antar. Maybe it could have been, once, but he wasn’t the same child that left his mother’s embrace to enter the pod. His home was Alex. Everything that Michael was came flooding back under the weight of Alex’s voice, of Alex’s question, and he knew, he _knew_ , that he wasn’t home. _Drown out the voices, play our own song…_ Connecting to the minds of an entire planet had showed him that as well as he was doing here, as well as he was adapting, this wasn’t _home_. These weren’t his people. This wasn’t his culture. _Alex_ was home. Whoever he was, whatever he did, he belonged to Alex.

_Would you come home?_

But he couldn’t—he couldn’t leave. He was going to have a child here, actively or no. They needed the Alighting, the planet—they needed it, and he understood now, in a way he’d never be able to explain. They needed this constant resetting of the orbits or the stars would get too far away to move back. They needed a child from him, someone connected to the moon, someone the moon would take and show the way. He couldn’t—could _never_ —abandon his child, not willingly. Could never leave a child like he’d been left. But to do that—to do that, he had to give up Alex. His home. The dream that would not die.

_Alex_. He breathed again, his body responding, living, his mind still on the moon, with the moon. And the moon—it heard him.

– WHAT IS IT YOU WANT? – it asked.

_Alex_.

There was a flash, blinding but comforting. It was different than the untethering of his soul. He felt whole, not afloat. He opened his eyes to a neverwhere.

_The air was warm, smelling vaguely of spices and freshly baked bread. Voices filled the space, relaxed, convivial. He couldn’t distinguish the words, but there was a comment and the people erupted in laughter. Was this a house? The edges of his vision were blurry, the details hazy. He followed the voices, feet bare against the grain of the wood floor. There were pictures on the walls, so many pictures. He couldn’t make out faces, or backgrounds, but he felt them, deep within himself. These were family photos._

_“Papi?” one of the voices asked. “I thought you were taking the puppy for a walk.” Their face was blurry, but their voice was concerned. He recoiled from its familiarity, from the ease with which they addressed him. Whatever this was, it wasn’t real. He spun, not wanting to torture himself with whatever strain-induced vision his brain brought him, and one of the pictures came into focus. Him and Alex in suits, beaming at each other, eyes overflowing. Isobel was between them and Max was next to Michael, tears in his eyes. Kyle and Greg stood behind Alex, who was sliding a ring onto Michael’s finger._

_That was it. He’d finally cracked. He’d lost it entirely. He supposed he shouldn’t be surprised; he had just had an entire world full of people in his head and moved entire planets back onto their orbits. Maybe his brain had pureed from the strain and this was the moon trying to be compassionate._

_If that was it, if the moon was trying to let him live his dream for his last moments…_

_“Papi? Are you all right?” Another one of the voices came toward him, face still hazy. “Dad!” they yelled at someone past him._

_Michael was shaking his head. He’d given this up. The possibility for this future, for any future with Alex, he’d given it up. He’d_ kept _giving it up, and it broke him every time. He’d pushed it down, pushed the pain away for so long, but it kept coming back, bubbling out of him. Maybe it was supposed to be a gift, but it felt like a reminder. A reminder of a life he could never have. A life he could’ve had, if only. If only._

_“Michael?” That was—that was Alex’s voice._

_Michael turned into that voice on reflex, stumbling, and Alex—Alex caught him. Alex—Alex was looking at him, concerned, confused. It—it felt like Alex, smelled like him, felt like his hands, his long, strong fingers rough with guitar calluses. Fingers that could dance, that could make Michael sing and scream and prop him up when he had nothing._

_In Alex’s arms, as always, he felt his defenses come down. The pain threatened to overwhelm him, but Alex was holding him safe and warm, in this house that was a home. He let it out the only way he could, collapsing in Alex’s arms and sobbing, clutching his shirt like a lifeline. “Why—why would the moon—how would—”_

_“Oh,” Alex said, face clearing, like everything made sense. It didn’t. “This is then. You thought it was a dream.”_

_“It_ is _a dream,” Michael sobbed. His voice was wrecked. The other people, he couldn’t focus on their faces, but their body language was concerned, and one stepped forward, like they wanted to help._

_“It’s not a dream,” Alex said._

_“It_ is _. It’s…” He looked around the room, trying to see past the hazy white. A height chart came into focus at the entrance to the kitchen, a different wood from the rest, but built into the wall. It was the same one his mother, Louise, Walt, and Roy had used, more family than he’d ever known he’d had. There were other markings, too, new ones. He was in a home, surrounded by a loving family, something he’d always wanted, and it wasn’t real. It wasn’t_ real _. “It’s all the dreams I’ve ever had.” Broken dreams. Lost dreams. Dreams he’d never let himself hope for. “Is this…?” Is this how he died? His mind shattered from the strain, giving into a hallucination of the life he’d never have until his body gave up?_

_He considered it. For a long, halting moment, he considered it. He’d given up everything, he’d_ given _everything he had. It had never been enough, not in the real world, but here… Maybe he could be happy here, in discarded, brilliant dreams, for at least as long as it mattered. The Alighting was over; no one would know he could have returned to his body. They’d assumed he’d died like all the rest. They wouldn’t know he’d given in. Given into that feeling of belonging, of safety, of warmth and love and Alex’s arms. He leaned into Alex, feeling the strength of his arms and chest, holding him tight._

_“Michael,” Alex said, voice gentle. “Look at me.”_

_Michael couldn’t disobey if he tried, Dream Alex or no. Alex, he looked older, but good. There were lines on his face, but they weren’t scream lines or worry lines. They were laugh lines, crinkles at the corners of his eyes. He was happy. Open. Full of a warm, unhurried love Michael had only seen in bursts. It burned into him and he looked away, at the kitchen with faded details but the smell of home-cooked food, at the people who spoke in his home with easy camaraderie, his dream children, and he knew he couldn’t. He clutched Dream Alex’s shirt harder. He’d promised the real Alex that he’d survive. The Antarians, they’d make him a father regardless of his participation—they needed someone connected to the moon— and he couldn’t leave a real child for a dream, no matter how warm and solid it felt._

_“This is a choice, Michael. The moon is offering you a choice,” Alex said._

_Michael shook his head again. “There was never a choice. We, neither of us, we never got a choice. We kept getting pulled away. You always came back,” he sobbed, raising one hand from Alex’s shirt to his face. “I can’t. I can’t, Alex.”_

_“You did it, right? The Alighting? You fixed it?” Alex asked._

_“It’s a temporary fix, it has to be redone regularly, they’ll need–”_

_“They’ll need someone else down the line, but it won’t be until long after you’re gone. There’s a loophole the moon can offer. You don’t have to stay.”_

_“I do, that’s the whole_ point _,” Michael’s voice cracked. “If I had a choice, I would’ve stayed with you.” Maybe it was silly, telling a dream this, but he’d never be able to tell the real Alex, never be held by his love again, never—_

_“Michael,” Alex said again, and Michael thought he might just stay in this dream forever if Alex kept saying his name. “Do you want this? Do you want to come back? To me? Try to…” It was Alex’s voice that cracked this time. “Try to be together? Start our own family?”_

_“What I want doesn’t matter, Alex,” he said, echoing his Alex’s old words. “I can’t leave one family to start another. You know I can’t.”_

_“I do know. But if you didn’t have to,” Alex pressed. “If you didn’t have to start a family there, if the moon could choose someone else. Would you?” His voice was thick. “Would you come home? To me?”_

_Michael looked at Alex through tear-soaked eyes. It bubbled out of him, not directed, just a fact of his existence. “_ **Yes** _.”_

_Alex smiled._

And then he was gone. The dream people, the house, everything was gone. He was drifting above Antar’s moon, body still loosely tethered to his body by Alex’s song. He felt his throat start to work, felt a sob come out of it.

– YOU HAVE CHOSEN. –

The moon was in his head, that calm, tranquil certainty he’d felt earlier flooding him, flooding _through_ him to the planet below, to a few select people. Michael felt it pour _out_ of him, into them. The moon chose them, filling them just as it had him.

The Alighting would live on. No children of his necessary.

He opened his eyes, the moon’s symbol glowing like a brand on his chest.


	3. The Return

It’d been almost three years since Michael had left, and Alex still couldn’t look at the damn moon. 

Moving on from Michael had been impossible enough in the ten years he was away. Back then, every view of the stars brought back memories of lying out in the bed of Michael’s truck—a truck that now sat in his garage, untouched—in the middle of the desert, safe and loved. Now… Now he didn’t just have the stars, reminding him of how long Michael had dreamed of flying away. Now he had the fucking moon up there, shining its light on him. How do you move on when your ex-everything left you to become a moon?

He tried traveling, prospecting potential places for relocation, but any place with sufficient cloud cover came with increased rain. The rain… the rain was worse. At least with the moon, he could hide inside, drawing the blinds. But the smell of rain, the smell of Michael, got everywhere, surrounded him, filled him with such an intense longing he fled the wetter parts of the world. He was left with the moon, bright and distant.

On bad nights, the moon taunted him. Close enough to see, too far to touch. A reminder that Michael was gone, likely settling down with a nice Antarian woman and raising the child he’d always wanted. Alex could be out with friends, surrounded by people who loved him, but the moon would be waiting when he went outside, highlighting the one who wasn’t there.

The new moon was worse. At least with the light of the moon on him, he could picture Michael’s light still guiding him. When the new moon came around, he’d be confronted with the idea that maybe… Maybe Michael hadn’t survived. Maybe the Alighting had taken his life, and he’d died, on an alien planet, and Alex would never know. Whatever had happened, Alex would never know.

Objectively, he knew three years was too long to still be hung up on your ex. He tried not to be. When his enlistment was up, he got a consulting job breaking into corporate databases to identify security flaws. It was good money, and it let him work his own hours. He made his life as full as he could: he picked up more instruments, wrote more music, got a dog. He made sure to take care of himself, learn to cook a little better, make sure he slept. He joined a local veteran’s group. They rarely talked about their service, but it let him hold onto that camaraderie, the best thing about life in the military. There were things you didn’t want to tell people, didn’t want them to have to understand. His group understood the shit over there without needing to be told.

For the local drama, he leaned on his friends. Team Alien. Team Left Behind. It hurt so badly to be the one left behind, and sometimes he drowned in the guilt of being the one who’d left Michael so many times. When Liz got back from her runner, the two of them and Greg formed the Alien Lovers’ Club. They understood the alien shit without needing to be told. They’d talk about moving on, about failing to, about having constant celestial reminders of their lost loves. Eventually, the purpose of his groups stopped mattering as much as the groups themselves.

He tried dating, a little. Roswell still had slim pickings, but Albuquerque didn’t. He found people with common interests, people with common backgrounds, people with different interests and different backgrounds. He tried to learn from every failure. He took dog training strategies from one, a guitar finger picking method from another, and from one memorable Benny, a rule to never date a man with a mustache. But every time they left the restaurant or the club, they had to pass under the watchful eye of the moon.

He’d filled his life until it was good, and for the most part, it felt that way. Some days, though, he’d come home, let the dog out, and stare at the empty house. Or he’d be paring down recipes into single servings. He’d see something, anything, that he wanted to show Michael, see a car that could have been tended to by him, or Arturo would comment about a broken appliance, and he’d remember. On those days, he’d go in the garage and lay in the bed of Michael’s truck, holding Michael’s hat to him like a comfort blanket. It was almost impressive that it still smelled like Michael— over a decade of sweat and oil and cow odor not bowing to niceties like time. He wondered if Michael had ever washed it. He was grateful, if he hadn’t.

Time passed, and the bad moments got fewer and farther between. Alex started being able to take comfort from the moon and the stars instead of grief. When he performed live, he’d stand outside for a bit before, pretending Michael was looking down on him, supporting him. He’d remember the look in Michael’s eyes the first time he heard his song, before he’d left to cry in his truck, the days when Michael would watch him practice, the times they’d played together. The sting lessened, and he started gaining strength from the memories. He missed Michael fiercely, but it stopped flooring him. It was fitting, he supposed, for a cosmic love. To have a love so intense it wrapped you up and filled your very soul, to have a connection so rich he’d never had it before and never would again, to feel something so exceptional, so privileged, it was fitting that the cost was that you wouldn’t get it forever.

Alex understood that something good was followed by something bad. It was a fact of his life. At the end of the day, though, he’d never give up his time with Michael, because those memories made him feel most alive.

This was enough. It wasn’t everything, but he could make it enough.

He could. He had to. It was all he was getting.

The day his Antarian returned, Alex woke alone and cold. His heater was acting up and he’d yet to call a repair technician to fix it. Every time he’d tried, he’d picture a mechanical genius perched in front of it, this one with curly hair, soulful eyes, and covered in grease even when there was no reason to be. He sighed. He’d have to take care of it eventually; it got cold at night. “It gets cold at night,” his mind supplied, showing him a guitar and a hesitant smile, and he did not thank it. Grabbing toast and coffee, he ignored the heater once more and settled down to work. He’d just passed the first firewall when he heard someone drive up. Alt-tab and there was the security camera footage.

It was Kyle’s car, and Alex closed his eyes, trying to remember if they’d had plans to meet up. When he reopened them, a man with curly hair and a giant belt buckle was pulling a guitar case out of the trunk. Alex froze. Kyle drove away, leaving the man to stare at the front door, eyes darting around, biting his lip furiously, fingers twitching around the case strap. Alex watched him walk up, raise a hand to the doorbell, and let it fall again. He watched him look down at the ground, take a deep breath and close his eyes tightly, then lift and set his jaw. The doorbell rang, and Alex jumped. The man’s hand hadn’t gone back up. He’d pressed the doorbell with his mind, which meant—

Which meant Alex wasn’t hallucinating. He wasn’t breathing, either. He lurched out of his chair, flailing for his crutch, almost falling in his haste. His dog, Buffy, yipped at him in alarm, and he glanced back at the cameras. They showing a man whose mouth was twitching, and he all but ran to the front door, yanking it open without a breath.

He stared, chest heaving. Michael’s hair was slightly longer, his scruff slightly shorter. He had new lines around his mouth and though he was fidgeting, there was a new resolve in his eyes, in his jaw, in the lift of his head. Like something in him had settled. There was new grease on his clothes, the same ones he’d left in, and his fingers were white where they clutched the case strap.

“Michael,” Alex said, stunned.

Michael’s eyes were wide and wet. “Alex.”

“Michael,” was all he could say. He wasn’t even sure if he said it aloud. Buffy danced around his feet.

Michael’s eyes darted from his, but staying on Alex’s body, and his mouth did a complicated twist. “I know—I know it’s been… a while,” he said. His voice sounded hoarse. From emotion? From disuse? Had he used his voice at all since he’d left? “And I don’t—I don’t _expect_ anything from you, I don’t. I know you’ve probably—probably moved on…” His brows were lifted in the middle, as if he was preparing for a strike.

“Michael,” Alex started, voice soft.

“I wanted… I wanted to… I couldn’t…”

“Michael.”

Michael’s eyes focused on his, then away again. He twisted the case strap. “I got a ride from Valenti, of all people,” he said, voice straining for casual, lips twitching. “We didn’t want to land in the middle of town, so we were just going to hitchhike the rest of the way in, but there was Valenti, on the side of the road, because he takes terrible care of his car and he and Steph were on their way back from some weekend trip—didn’t think they’d still be together, but good for them, I think—and I fixed his car and he gave us a ride in, and—”

Alex cupped Michael’s cheek with his free hand and watched Michael’s eyelids flutter shut, heard his words peter out. He traced Michael’s cheekbone with his thumb, feeling the warmth of him, the solidity. “You’re here,” he said.

Michael opened his eyes and looked him. “I’m here. I’m… I’m home.”

Alex felt a smile threaten to break onto his face. “I thought… I didn’t…” He swallowed. “Are you staying?”

Michael’s lips twitched. This time it was clearer: a smile. A cautious one. “We did the Alighting.”

_And survived_ , he didn’t say. Alex breathed for the first time in what felt like three years.

“It was… It was a lot. And it was necessary. If we hadn’t… it would’ve been a slow death for the planet. I get that, now. Afterward… I was part of the moon, or it was part of me, or—” He shook his head. “Antar was not our home. Not my home. I couldn’t pretend, not after… And the moon, it could tell. It… It chose new people, a new legacy. People who could do the Alighting, people I’d never met. Same with Iz and Max and the suns. We taught them what we’d learned, best we could, but now…” His eyes pinned Alex in place, full of such devotion, such hope, such love. He cleared his throat. “We did what we needed to do. We’re done. We didn’t need to stay there. Didn’t need to have a legacy there. We could go home, stay… home.” His voice was thickening, and he was almost choking the words out. “You, you are my home. I…” He closed his eyes briefly. “Can I stay?”

The world froze. Emotion filled Alex, a deep well of possibility and hope, strengthened by the certainty of his love for Michael, of Michael’s love for him. He stroked Michael’s cheekbone again, and felt something inside settle when he was rewarded by a hitching in Michael’s breath. _Cosmic_ , he thought, tears forming. He breathed deeply, and his lungs felt like they worked again, like they’d been half-asleep since Michael had left but filled properly now. His lips caught Michael’s, and the warmth, the fire, it filled him. He felt himself wake up, felt himself start to become whole again. Pulling back slightly, he whispered, “ ** _Yes_**.”

Michael smiled.


	4. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alex tries to convince himself that this is real.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phew! This story really got away from me. Thank you for everyone still reading. As promised, your happy ending.

Alex spent the next month in a daze, floating. It wasn’t a hallucination, he knew that, Michael was _back_ , but after everything—the ups and downs, all the leaving and returning—some part of him didn’t trust it. He wasn’t sure if he expected his father to rise from the grave and shoot them, or the Air Force to discover Michael and take him away, or an asteroid to obliterate all life on Earth, but he kept waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Everything was just… too good. Too happy. Alex wasn’t used to anything resembling that. They’d had a big, welcome home dinner at Isobel’s house—or Rosa’s, since Isobel left—and it was… perfect. The entirety of Team Alien, human and Antarian, reunited, laughing and crying and sharing stories. Kyle had told Steph a couple of years ago, when they’d gotten serious—“It’s not like it’s putting the Pod Squad in danger anymore,” he’d said—and she joined them, no secrets between anyone. The atmosphere was joyous, relaxed, and so… comfortable. Only about half of the humans understood and believed that the three Antarians had channeled a planet full of people and three celestial bodies to reset an entire solar system, but it didn’t matter. It was over. Michael was next to Alex, thighs touching the entire meal, exactly where he was supposed to be.

As if that miracle evening wasn’t enough, it got better. Liz and Kyle shared their research into Maria’s condition with Michael. They’d identified a dormant gene in her genetic makeup that, after comparing with their leftover Antarian samples, they hypothesized was supposed to regulate her powers. For some reason, the gene had been turned off, and if they could turn it on, it should be able to halt the neurodegeneration. Michael’s brow furrowed, and he muttered something about asinine, dismissive butlers, and called for Max with his mind. Apparently, Max’s healing had been honed to the point where he could turn on individual genes, which was absolutely insane. What training had the Pod Squad gone through? What else could they do? They kept close watch, but CTs confirmed that even with Maria’s use of her powers, her mind wasn’t deteriorating anymore.

Max did the same thing for Mimi, and _then_ Isobel and Max worked together to retrieve most of Mimi’s memories. Everyone was curious on how _that_ one worked, but Isobel just stated calmly that it was what they’d done to retrieve Michael’s memories of his mother, and Michael’s smile had been so peaceful and watery that Alex’s heart had melted. Suddenly, Alex had Michael _and_ his surrogate mother back, and Michael had the memories of _his_ mother back. Alex couldn’t help feeling that this was a dream, that one day he’d wake up alone and cold again, crying for what might have been.

Then there were the changes in Michael. Nothing flashy, certainly nothing bad, but… There was a sureness in him that’d never been there before. It showed everywhere, but nowhere clearer than his interactions with Max and Isobel. They were linked in their heads, now, stronger than whatever Max and Isobel had had before they left. He knew they used that link instead of phones in most cases, Michael zoning out for a minute before saying something like, “I’ve got to go to Max and Liz’s tomorrow—if Max tries to repair that siding by himself, it’s going to be a mess.” Sometimes, Max or Isobel would drop something off for Michael, too, something he’d asked for, and wasn’t that new? Michael asking for things? Nonessential things? His siblings casually showing up? Isobel showed up one evening on her way home from work with a bag of confectioner’s sugar and milk, and when Alex opened the door, she said, “Michael ran out,” and let herself in. “I take payment in the form of cupcakes,” she added. Alex hadn’t even known he was baking.

Michael didn’t take a backseat with Max and Isobel anymore. He still did everything he could for them, but they supported him back, and when Michael took a hit (metaphorical ones, these days), it was because he knew he could handle it, not because he thought he was more worthy of it than they were. It was a small change, but it meant everything.

He got his job back from Sanders. Sanders had greeted him with a gruff, “There’s work enough. You’d better get started,” which, judging from Michael’s reaction, was the old man’s version of an ecstatic hug. Michael spent his free time between Alex and agricultural engineering, just as he’d always wanted to. Years of library research and ranch work had built him into the go-to mechanic and not-quite-engineer for every ranch owner, but now, he dug deeper into that. He designed and constructed new equipment, testing it all out in 1/10th scales in the backyard. Their backyard. Their backyard, which, in no time at all, turned into the most beautiful garden Alex had ever seen. Michael spoke to professors and other experts in the field, tweaking his designs according to what they and the plants—because he could hear _plants_ now—told him. He spoke of making bigger versions, starting a pilot program to help farms and ranches all across the country. His eyes lit up when he did that, rambling about customized solutions for different soil porosity, and Alex felt his chest swell.

He didn’t want Michael to think he had to do this, though, to stay. It was an old fear, but Alex didn’t want either of them to dwell on it. “You know I love you,” he blurted out one evening, as Michael discussed seeders.

Michael paused. “I love you, too.”

Alex tried to organize his thoughts. “I mean, I love this, I love what you’re doing with Gregor and Hastings and the other ranchers, but you don’t have to. You don’t have to change what you do. I love you. Period.”

Michael wrapped him in his arms, smiling softly. “I know. That’s not why. I don’t think I need to do it to deserve this.” He gave a cocky grin that Alex felt on his cheek. “Turns out saving a planet’s pretty good for one’s sense of self-worth.”

“Then—and again, not complaining—why?”

Michael was quiet a long moment, and when he spoke, his voice was soft. “I know now. I used to wonder, and wonder, and wonder, and now… now I know. I know what’s out there, I know how their tech works, what it’s like to live there, and I know… I know _this_ is my home.” He tightened his arms around Alex. “I can feel it in my bones. There’s no more wondering. No more ‘what ifs.’ Not on that front, anyway. This… This isn’t something that happened to me. This is my _choice_.”

Michael held Alex, and Alex held Michael back.

He tried not to wait for the other shoe to drop.

That wasn’t to say there weren’t growing pains. They’d still been figuring things out, when Michael had left, and no one is the exact same after three years, let alone three years on an alien planet. Michael had always ruled the kitchen, but now it was a whirlwind of telekinesis, eggs cracking themselves into bowls, sautéing vegetables stirring themselves on the stove, notes scribbling themselves in cookbooks. Alex marveled at his control. Michael had used his powers casually in front of him when they’d lived together, but it’d felt like he was always holding them back. Now, they seemed fluid, no longer a thing to control, but a thing to channel.

There was also a surprising amount of cross-stitching.

The brand, though, was what Alex focused on: the gleaming moon symbol inset over Michael’s heart. They had to cover it with a bandage when Michael went out, his threadbare shirts failing to cover the glow, and Alex was afraid to touch it, skirting around it when he ran his fingertips over Michael’s bare torso, laying his head on Michael’s other side. When Michael told him he could still feel the moon, in one of their late night bed confessionals, Alex froze. This was it. This was the shoe dropping.

Michael had explained the tranquility of the moon, the comfort, and how easy it had been to lose himself in that feeling. He’d been cagey about why he’d left it, saying only that if he hadn’t found his tether to his body, he would’ve died. Alex hadn’t really wanted to hear more about Michael’s near-death experience, but now…

“What if you get lost in it again? In the feeling? For good?”

Michael laughed. “Not going to happen.”

Alex’s heart was thudding loudly, though, muscles tensing. “How do you know that?”

Michael looked at him, still smiling. “Because you’re here.”

“Michael…”

“The moon… it’s peaceful. Beautiful. It’s like a constant grounding presence on my chest. But I won’t get lost in it again. I can’t. I know the tether to my soul, now.”

That wasn’t good enough. They’d been through so much, and it was a fact of Alex’s life that bad things could always happen. After Caulfield, after Max had died, Michael had checked out, and now… Now he had somewhere else to go. “If you lose it… If you lose yourself, and I can’t pull you out…” Alex shuddered at the thought.

Michael laughed again, and pulled himself closer to Alex. “You will always be able to pull me out.” At Alex’s frown, he reached out, smoothing the lines between his brows, and continued. “When I was drifting, I couldn’t even remember who I was. Everything had been whited out by the pain. I couldn’t even remember my own name.”

Alex wrapped an arm around Michael, keeping him close.

“But then… this music started playing. And when I heard it, everything came flooding back. I remembered who I was, what I wanted, and I could feel it. This… invisible string, tying me back to my body.”

Alex’s imagination failed to produce an image of this. “What song?”

Michael’s smile grew, and when their eyes met, Alex nearly drowned in the emotion in his eyes. “Your song. The one you wrote about us.”

Alex stopped breathing, his heart on a precipice.

“You asked me to come home,” Michael continued. “So I did.”

Alex reached out, hesitantly, hand poised over the brand. At Michael’s nod, he reached forward and closed his eyes. He gasped. He saw endless forests, felt the serenity, the fullness, the _life_ ground him as nothing else ever had. Through it all, intertwined with the landscape, was his song, flowing freely, aligned perfectly with the rhythm of the moon’s heartbeat.

“I could never get lost, not when you’re here,” Michael said, his voice swirling in this place. “You’re the tether to my soul.”

Alex pulled back to look up at Michael. Michael, his love, his life, his _home_. Michael, who reached out to wipe the tears he hadn’t realized were falling from his cheeks. Michael, who kissed him softly, slow and sweet. Who made love to him in the same way, all that he was laid bare, a dream, a promise, and a fulfillment. When day broke, Alex woke under him, warm and content, safe in Michael’s arms. He ran his fingers lightly over Michael’s curls, feeling his breath against his chest. Michael was safe, Michael was _here_ , and this dream… It may be a dream, but it was real, too. He left the sense of possibility and hope wash over him and for the first time in years, Alex Manes _believed_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This work started by trying to figure out what the Alighting could be, but about halfway through this work I realized that what I really wanted was to give these two men a choice. They kept hurtling from one disaster to the next, and falling back together (or not). I wanted them (especially Michael, who had so many unanswered questions) to see what their lives could be, and choose each other. Give them some of their agency back.


End file.
